Experiments described in a new study reveal that our sense of what we know about something is increased when we learn that others around us understand it. The findings are consistent with the idea of a "community of knowledge" ...

Nontrivial numbers of Americans believe in the paranormal. These beliefs have spawned thousands of groups dedicated to investigating paranormal phenomena and a proliferation of ghost-hunting entries in the reality television ...

Magicians have astonished audiences for centuries by subtly, yet powerfully, influencing their decisions. But there has been little systematic study of the psychological factors that make magic tricks work.

No one likes severe weather, but for some just the thought of a thunderstorm, tornado, hurricane or blizzard can severely affect their lives. When blood pressures spike, individuals obsessively monitor weather forecasts and ...

Taste can be classified into five flavors that we sense, but how many odors can we smell? There are likely about 10 basic categories of odor, according to research published September 18th in the open access journal PLOS ...

Scientists at the Campus Vienna Biocenter (Austria) have found a way to overcome some of the limitations of light microscopy. Applying the new technique, they can record the activity of a worm's brain with high temporal ...

University of Utah bioengineers discovered our understanding of language may depend more heavily on vision than previously thought: under the right conditions, what you see can override what you hear. These findings suggest ...

The fact that taller people also tend to be slightly smarter is due in roughly equal parts to two phenomena—the same genes affect both traits and taller people are more likely than average to mate with smarter people and ...

Clues left at the scene of the crime don't always point to the guilty party, as EPFL researchers investigating Parkinson's disease have discovered. It is generally accepted that the disease is aggravated when a specific protein ...

Mapping the human brain, with its billions of neurons, is one of science's most elusive projects. But a new federal program—the $100 million Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) Initiative—could ...

Phenomenon

A phenomenon (from Greek φαινόμενoν), plural phenomena, is any observable occurrence. Phenomena are often, but not always, understood as 'appearances' or 'experiences'. These are themselves sometimes understood as involving qualia.

The term came into its modern philosophical usage through Immanuel Kant, who contrasted it with noumenon (for which he used the term Ding an sich, or "thing-in-itself"), which, in contrast to phenomena, are not directly accessible to observation. Kant was heavily influenced by Leibniz in this part of his philosophy, in which phenomenon and noumenon serve as interrelated technical terms.